This months issues of Prophecy in the News and The Prophecy Watcher.

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Top banner done by Thranduil.

"The Clash of Civilisations" by Samuel P. Huntington (German translation)

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Tevildo, Prince of Cats

Just finished re-reading the 1958 political novel “The Ugly American” by William Lederer and Eugene Burdick (with real-life models behind several people and situations - the paperback book of the period itself is disintegrating into a looseleaf collection slowly but surely), and have almost finished their 1965 follow-up novel “Sarkhan”. Savage indictments of the thundering ignorance of about all US bureaucracies of the time, more concerned with intra-US turf fights than with what was going on outside the borders of the US, and thus droningly repeating mistakes again and again due to the arrogance flowing from the thundering ignorance.

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Re-reading "Lord of the Rings" again.

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A series of books by an Egyptian-born former Islamist (now German citizen) who has by now turned into one of the severest critics of Islam. He knows what he’s talking about, being the son of an Imam of the village / town he was born in and having memorized the Quran (Koran) at an early age, and having read much published in Arabic on the topic which many western commentators who are unable to read Arabic have no knowledge of.

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Tevildo, Prince of Cats

I'm reading a Swedish book called Burned. And I'm just starting out, it's aimed at teens, but I think this is an important book for me to read. It's basically about a girl, Ellen, who helps a guy named Jonas who has a wife and son with one of their ponies especially, and Jonas has taken advantage of her, in a sexual manner. The book is supposed to be a helping guide for any teens who are in a similar situation to speak up and to always remember that it's NEVER the child's fault, it's ALWAYS on the adult. So far I'm really liking it, and I wish it was a worldwide book, because I think the message is so super important. It's written in third perspective, so it gives insight into both Ellen and Jonas and their thoughts and actions etc. So far it's very interesting, and I can't wait to get through it.

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Rest in peace Carrie Fisher, the legend we didn't deserve.

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Tevildo, Prince of Cats

The second of a non-fiction three-book set about the end of the Bronze Age by Eberhard Zangger, a German geoarchaeologist (English Wiki wrongly states that he is a German-born Swiss). His points about the continued confusion about what exactly caused the massive disruption in the eastern Mediterranean leading to the end of the Bronze Age are that they are caused, first, by (badly) overrating some written sources still available to us, and (badly) underrating some others, and second to some historically based prejudices both in classical Greek times and the 19th century, leading to an unjustified downplaying if not ignoring of the role western Anatolia (with a possibly central role played by Troy, not just the acropolis or city, but as at least a non-trivial city-state) in the collapse of the Bronze Age societies starting around 1200 BC. His starting point in his first book was that Plato’s Atlantis book, broken off at less than half of what was planned as a three-volume set (the dialogues “Timaeus” – complete, “Critias” – incomplete, and “Hermocrates” – announced but apparently never started), was actually a badly distorted account of the Trojan War, distorted by time and a detour via Egypt, leading to translation errors of several sorts. It was Plato’s only unfinished work, and Zangger assumes that Plato broke off when he reached a point where his writing (from a source handed down to him within his family for about 200 years) suddenly was almost identical to the opening of Homer’s “Iliad”. His previous work having been dogged by accusations of plagiarism, Plato certainly wasn’t going to do a Homer retread, which would have turned the accusations into howls.

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The Norman Conquest by Marc Morris (NF)

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Tevildo, Prince of Cats

Re-reading Frank McCourt’s third book “Teacher Man” from 2005, after having just finished re-reading his second book “'Tis- a memoir” from 1999. Frank McCourt’s 1996 Pulitzer Prize-winning world bestseller “Angela’s Ashes” (which I’ve also read at least twice) came later in life for him – at 66 – than LoTR came for JRRT – at 62. And both were teachers of English, though at quite different education levels of pupils / students.

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Tevildo, Prince of Cats

I’ve noticed that when checking on Paul C. Doherty in Wikipedia, our (solely German translations) collection of Hugh Corbett (6 of 19) and Athelstan (8 of 18) is woefully incomplete. With the Corbett series, the German translation only starts with book 5 and ends with book 10. The four earlier English books are from the late 1980s back to 1986 and may have fallen into the black hole named “out of print”. The translated Athelstan books are the first eight, so the missing ten are of later printing dates. But ordering (if possible) 23 books at one go would probably motivate my wife to reach for the heaviest frying pan or things of the sort. On the other hand, I have not yet assembled two of the Ikea Billy cupboard on-top extension sets that I bought a while ago. I would have to find other storage space for diverse things randomly piled up on top of those two Billy cupboards simply to get them out of the way. Actually, we simply need an additional, small, but entirely book-dedicated room!

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"Mallorn", the yearly publication of the Tolkien Society (UK).

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